The hype started again after the EU referendum when commentators suggested that the party would get a similar post-referendum bounce to that experienced by the SNP in Scotland.

Instead, its vote went down with UKIP suffering poor results in both local and parliamentary by-elections.

The final stage of hype came after Paul Nuttall was elected leader. The ebullient Liverpudlian was immediately written up as a "major threat" to Labour with commentators queuing up to state that Labour "should be worried" about the "game-changer" of a Nuttall-Led UKIP replacing them in their English heartlands.

The long-promised UKIP storm had turned out to have been a mere mirage, while the very real rise of the Conservative party continued unabated.

So how could it have been? Here was a seat in Stoke which had so heavily voted for Leave that Nuttall had labeled it the "capital of Brexit". And here was an electorate which was so clearly disillusioned with Labour that the former incumbent Tristram Hunt held the seat in 2015 on the lowest turnout of any MP. And here was a time when Labour were polling at some of the lowest levels in its history.

Absolutely every single circumstance was in Paul Nuttall's favour and yet still he failed to win.

This was not some great surprise however. Instead, it was a continuation of a long record of UKIP underperforming both its own polling and its own expectations.

In the coming days, there will be much talk of this result being the beginning of the end for Paul Nuttall's party. In reality, the end of UKIP's prospects of becoming a seious parliamentary force came some time ago.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Business Insider.